“Boosting Their Bottom Line”: The Koch Brothers Revel In The Sequester
Although everyone from President Barack Obama to House Speaker John Boehner has lamented the negative impact of the $85 billion budget sequestration, at least two major Washington figures are thrilled about the severe cuts. For Charles and David Koch, the sequester accomplishes the goal that motivated the billionaire brothers to help launch the Tea Party movement in 2010: weakening the federal government. And now that the cuts have begun to take effect, the Koch brothers are reveling in their success.
Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing dark money group founded by the Koch brothers in 2004, sent out an email to supporters over the weekend claiming credit for sequestration. The email, from AFP President Tim Phillips, claims, “While Speaker Boehner and the GOP deserve credit and thanks for taking a gutsy stand, it’s important to realize what an incredible impact AFP activists like you” have had in convincing Congress to slash the federal budget across the board.
“These combined efforts helped spread a message across the country that enabled House Republicans to take heart and do the right thing knowing that conservatives had their back,” Phillips continues. His full letter, which also brags that USA Today “recognized the effectiveness of AFP activists and gave us the opportunity to articulate the importance of sequester cuts,” can be read here.
The Koch brothers are also taking to the airwaves to keep up the pressure for even more cuts. Public Notice, to which Charles and David Koch donated $8 million between 2009 and 2011, released a new ad Tuesday minimizing the impact of the sequester — and encouraging the government to make even deeper cuts.
“President Obama calls sequestration a ‘meat cleaver’ that will ‘eviscerate’ government services,” the ad’s narrator ominously charges. “What is sequestration? A three-percent cut in government spending. Three cents out of every dollar the government spends. We’re more than $16 trillion in debt, and the government wastes billions each year on duplicate programs.”
“Americans have made tough choices and cut back. Washington refuses,” the ad concludes. “Call Washington and ask them why it’s so hard to cut spending.”
The ad — which ignores the fact that government spending under President Barack Obama has grown at a slower rate than it did under any president since Dwight Eisenhower was president in the 1950s — will reportedly run until March 15.
Charles and David Koch’s enthusiasm for the sequester isn’t hard to understand. Although the cuts will have a devastating effect on society’s most vulnerable, they will likely boost Koch Industries’ bottom line. The budget sequester is expected to hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory efforts, and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has warned that “under sequestration, funding reductions would decelerate the nation’s transition into a clean energy economy.” Both outcomes would seem to be very good news for the oil billionaires.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, March 5, 2013
“Low Information Republicans”: What We Have Here Is More Than A Failure To Communicate
One of the more common areas of discussion among political professionals is the phenomenon of low-information voters. These are folks who care about the country and its future, but choose not to keep up on current events, due to some combination of feeling busy, apathetic, and frustrated. Political pros find these Americans difficult to reach — and at times, easy to manipulate — precisely because they’re disengaged and far behind the curve.
The point isn’t that low-information voters are dumb, but rather, that they’re ignorant. In focus groups, you’ll hear these same folks express poorly thought out opinions based on vague “something I heard on the news” observations.
But what happens when we move past low-information voters and start looking at low-information politicians? Ezra Klein relayed an incredible exchange from last week about the ongoing fiscal debate in Washington.
Would it matter, one reporter asked the veteran legislator, if the president were to put chained-CPI — a policy that reconfigures the way the government measures inflation and thus slows the growth of Social Security benefits — on the table?
“Absolutely,” the legislator said. “That’s serious.”
Another reporter jumped in. “But it is on the table! They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained-CPI.”
“Who wants to do it?” said the legislator.
“The president,” replied the reporter.
“I’d love to see it,” laughed the legislator.
In other words, an elected member of Congress — a “veteran legislator,” not some freshman who’s only been in office a couple of months — wants to see President Obama endorse a “serious” policy like chained-CPI as part of a larger debt-reduction package, but the lawmaker has absolutely no idea that Obama has already endorsed chained-CPI as part of a larger debt-reduction package. Indeed, in this case, the Republican lawmaker was so incredulous, he or she laughed at reality, as if it couldn’t possibly be true.
So, is it fair to say Washington debates would be less ridiculous if low-information Republican lawmakers were simply brought up to speed on the basics? Would compromise be easier if GOP officials had some clue as to what President Obama is, in reality, offering?
Well, no, probably not.
Jon Chait reminds us of the classic Upton Sinclair line: “It is impossible to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on not understanding it.”
As this is applied to the ongoing political debates in DC, Republicans seem ignorant to a jaw-dropping degree about some of the basics, but even if they suddenly became more informed, it’s likely they’d come up with new reasons not to govern constructively with the White House.
Indeed, we don’t have to speculate to know this is true. Over the weekend, Ezra highlighted concerns raised by Mike Murphy, one of the top political consultants in the Republican Party, who said President Obama could reach a bipartisan deal with Republicans if only he endorsed chained CPI, apparently unaware that Obama has already done this.
Reminded of the facts, Murphy dug in, saying Obama endorsed means testing, but “refused” chained CPI. This is factually incorrect, too — indeed, it’s the exact opposite of reality — and when this was brought to his attention, Murphy switched gears, saying chained CPI is a “small beans gimmick” and Republicans just aren’t able to “trust” the White House.
Keep in mind, Murphy’s no dummy, but his line of argument is literally incoherent. He wants Obama to endorse a policy. Told that Obama already endorsed that policy, Murphy denies it. Presented with proof, Murphy decides the policy he supports isn’t so great after all.
So what does Murphy recommend? That Obama “earn trust” with Republicans by “first” agreeing to spending cuts. But in our reality, Obama already embraced about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in 2011, with no accompanying revenue. In other words, Murphy believes the way out of the current mess is for the president to give Republicans 100% of what they want, accepting another cuts-only package.
Ezra’s bottom line rings true: Republicans have effectively eliminated the possibility of compromise, since they “just want to get the White House to implement their agenda in return for nothing.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 4, 2013
“Both Sides Are Not To Be Blamed”: John Boehner Will Accept Only A 100%-0% “Compromise” Deal
President Obama met with congressional leaders from both parties and both chambers at the White House this morning about the latest in a series of self-inflicted, easily-avoided wounds. There were no realistic hopes that the policymakers would somehow reach an agreement to replace the sequestration cuts, and expectations were met: the group spoke for about an hour and then quit, resolving nothing.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) left the meeting and spoke for about a minute to reporters without taking questions. For those who can’t watch clips online, he argued:
“Let’s make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”
I’m trying to think of a way to explain this in a way Boehner will understand. As the Speaker sees it, the very idea of a balanced compromise is ridiculous — a compromise would necessarily include revenue, Democrats already got new revenue, so it’s outrageous for anyone to even raise the possibility.
Let’s put this as plainly as possible: in the summer of 2011, both sides accepted a debt-reduction deal that cut spending by over $1.2 trillion without any additional revenue — a win for Republicans. In late 2012, both sides accepted another deal that raised about $600 billion in revenue without any additional cuts — a win for Democrats.
Now it’s time to add another piece to the puzzle, and the Speaker of the House only remembers part of the very recent past.
This sentence…
“Let’s make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.”
…makes exactly as much sense as this sentence:
“Let’s make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over.”
Substantively, there is no difference between the two arguments. Both represent extremes. Except right now, Republicans think the first sentence makes perfect sense and no one is even bothering with the second sentence.
Indeed, if Boehner were to accept Obama’s compromise, Boehner would still come out on top since the spending-cut totals would still easily outweigh the revenue totals. The president’s offer, at face value, is already a win for the GOP.
But Republicans won’t accept a win; they’ll accept a rout. According to Boehner, the only available solution to a problem he helped create is one in which his side gets 100% of what it wants, predicated on the assumption that the massive spending cuts agreed to in 2011 have escaped Republicans’ memories altogether.
At this point, most Americans want a compromise. Most Democrats want and have already proposed a compromise. But Boehner wants everyone to know there will be no compromise, and there’s nothing the president can say or do to change his mind.
I’ll now look forward to pundits everywhere telling me how “both sides” are to blame.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 1, 2013
“Co-Opted By The Extremists”: John Boehner And The GOP Choose The Tea Party Over The Middle Class
The Republicans, now led from behind by House Speaker John Boehner, are painting themselves into a tiny corner. Boehner may have secured his job as speaker but he has categorically rejected any hope of a grand bargain, thereby leading his party in a rejection of America’s middle class. Unless he can be persuaded by Republican senators and a few dozen of his House colleagues to accept a balanced deal with the president and the Democrats he will severely harm his party by appealing only to the Tea Party.
Leaving the White House after the meeting with the president, Speaker Boehner dug in his heels against the closing of any tax loopholes or raising any revenue. Hasn’t he learned anything since the election?
Look at what has happened to the Republicans. Democrats have a 22 point advantage (according to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll) on who would look out for the middle class, the largest margin in 20 years. The same poll found that 36 percent of the public viewed the Republicans favorably in October of 2012, only 29 percent view them favorably today—a remarkable drop in just four months.
And there are very good reasons why House Republicans, who really are the current face of the party, are tanking. They are completely out of touch with the American people on the critical issues. Putting aside votes on the Violence Against Women Act or relief for Hurricane Sandy or averting the “fiscal cliff” or even gay rights, choice, and immigration, they are digging a huge hole for themselves on economic issues.
Right now, 76 percent of Americans want a balanced approach to cutting the deficit, only 19 percent support the Republican position of “cuts only.” By over 2 to 1, voters think the sequester is a bad idea. If the House Republicans and John Boehner continue down their radical path of refusing to negotiate, threatening government shutdowns, and not raising the debt limit, their public standing will continue to erode.
According to a National Journal survey, four-fifths of Americans want to completely exempt Social Security and Medicare from any deficit reduction.
With entitlements making up two-thirds of the budget and growing, it doesn’t take Willie Sutton to figure out that’s where the money is! In order to get Democrats to take on entitlements and the political heat that would bring, the Republicans need to acknowledge that the wealthy must pay their fair share, that hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners shouldn’t be getting more tax breaks. Real tax reform means that we have a fairer and more equitable system. That really is only common sense.
But right now, if Boehner continues to march in lock step with his right flank, there will be no grand bargain, there will be no tax reform, there will be no stabilizing of future budgets. Boehner caved during the last grand bargain negotiations in 2011, according to this week’s New Yorker, because Eric Cantor and the Tea Party forced him to pull out of the deal.
Now, he refuses to negotiate, to work across the aisle, to even work with Senate Republicans. This is not the mark of a leader but someone who has been co-opted by the extremists in his party.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, March 1, 2013
“No Good Choices”: Sequestration Is Here And Danger Lies Ahead
At midnight, $85 billion in federal budget funds will be sequestered (that is, held back) by the Treasury Department, with the potential to cause real pain for the economy and many Americans if Republicans and Democrats can’t agree to some sort of solution. (For an explainer about how this all came about, see here.)
The two sides are, naturally, quite far apart. The White House has offered a sequester replacement plan that it touts as “balanced” and thus ostensibly palatable to Republicans, though the administration is actually selling itself short: the plan should be quite appealing to the GOP exactly because it is unbalanced. The plan offers $930 billion in budget cuts with only $680 billion in revenue ($100 billion of which comes from Chained CPI, anathema to most progressives).
Republicans, meanwhile, want a sequester solution with no new revenue whatsoever—“The revenue issue is now closed,” House Speaker John Boehner said on Thursday—and many Republicans would like the sequester cuts rejiggered to spare defense spending and hit domestic and entitlement programs even harder.
So both sides are now playing the blame game, hoping that the public will get seriously angry about the disruptions caused by the sequester and blame the other side, thus bringing them to the table ready to give concessions.
There is substantial reason to be optimistic that Obama has the upper hand and will “win” this battle. The public appears to be on his side, and serious fractures within the GOP may soon emerge—defense hawks who cannot abide the Pentagon cuts much longer, and rationalists within the party who think the brand is being irreparably damaged.
But for progressives, is it really a win for Obama’s preferred approach to prevail? The emerging consensus is ‘no.’ Some of the cuts Obama offers are plain bad, like his offer to “reform” federal retirement programs and save $35 billion, which means in essence to take $35 billion from the pensions of public workers. Many cuts are inoffensive, and some are good cuts: like reducing certain agricultural subsidies and reducing Medicare payments to big drug companies.
The revenue would mainly be taken from the wealthy via capping deductions and closing loopholes that benefit top earners. But there’s that Chained CPI bit (or “superlative CPI,” as the White House refers to it) that really troubles progressives—and should. It represents a tangible cut to the safety net: seniors already living on $1,200 per month would see $1,000 less per year under the new formula. Disabled veterans would lose $1,400 per year, and middle-class taxes would be hiked on top of it. (The increased tax revenue is, I suppose, why the White House has classified Chained CPI as new revenue, but on the benefit side of Social Security and other programs, this is clearly a cut.)
Cutting entitlements for any reason is a no-go for many Democrats in Congress, especially when coupled with nearly a trillion dollars in budget cuts. That’s what would happen if Obama’s plan wins, and it’s what worries liberals. “There’s a broader concern about the fact that entitlements may get ensnared when we go to an alternative fix, [that] they won’t escape,” Representative Jerry Nadler told BuzzFeed.
The AFL-CIO issued a statement this week that didn’t back Obama’s “balanced” approach, but called for the sequester to be straight-up repealed. “There’s no need to replace the sequester in full or in part. We don’t need it. Republicans are saying we need to address the source of the problem as leverage to get entitlement cuts,” it read. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has also called for sequestration to be completely repealed.
That’s the best-case solution for progressives. (Realistically speaking, of course. The actual best-case solution is the comprehensive plan released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.) But Boehner probably won’t be able to sell a full repeal of spending cuts in exchange for exactly nothing to his rambunctious hard-core caucus in the House. There might not be any deal to be had here.
In that case, sequestration stays in place. That’s definitely worse than repealing it, but is it really worse than Obama’s grand bargain? Under sequestration half of the cuts come from defense spending; Medicare is protected except for a 2 percent cut to doctor reimbursements, and Social Security, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food stamp programs are protected entirely.
The other domestic cuts are no doubt painful and bad policy, but progressives have a tough choice in weighing that against what Obama’s proposing. And this of course assumes Obama gets everything he wants, which will not happen. Whatever bargain Congress and Obama strike out, if they manage to get something done, will almost certainly be worse.
There are real dangers to enacting some kind of bargain with Republicans to end the sequester—clearly on policy, but also on the politics, even though the administration seems to think otherwise. If White House aides truly believe that achieving a “grand bargain” that includes chained CPI will yield some sort of political victory, they ought to pay closer attention to the blame game now happening around the sequester.
One of Bob Woodward’s central claims, and the one that spurred the now-infamous pushback from the White House, is that Obama’s team came up with the sequester. This has been relentlessly pushed by Republicans (who invented a corny #Obamaquester hashtag) and by far too many mainstream media journalists.
This is plainly ridiculous—Obama wanted a clean debt-ceiling hike in 2011, and Republicans denied it and forced a showdown. Republicans were not enticed by what the White House offered to end the standoff and demanded some kind of guarantee of budget reductions, and at that point an administration official proposed sequestration as a tool. To strip that final piece of the timeline of all preceding context, and say that somehow Obama wanted the sequester, is exactly backwards—but it’s what is happening.
This is identical to what would likely happen to Chained CPI. Sure, this whole showdown was created by Republicans. And everyone understands the GOP to be the party that wants to cut “entitlement” programs. But Republicans have very deftly avoided proposing specific cuts to Social Security or Medicare in this debate; only Obama has with his Chained CPI proposal. Does anybody really think that two years from now, Republicans wouldn’t pull the exact same parsing of history as they did with the sequester, and blame Obama for cutting Social Security, which an overwhelming amount of Americans oppose? (Remember too that this is exactly what the Romney-Ryan ticket did with the $700 million in Medicare cuts included in the Affordable Care Act.)
In short, the sequester is a disaster, but a potentially worse disaster may lie ahead. There are no good choices here, only less-bad ones, and progressives should be wary about confusing political victory with a policy victory.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, March 1, 2013
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